You Can’t Fight City Haul

Charles Dickens is guilty of an undercount. It’s not a tale of two cities, it’s a shift that’s taking place in big cities across the country. While most urban blight is notable for what you see, this trend is most visible in what you don’t: Kids. “The number of children under 18 living in big U.S. cities is down 6% in the past decade … The drop is especially stark among families with little kids: The number of children under age 5 in big cities fell 15%, compared with a drop of 7% nationwide. Even cities that are gaining population are losing children.” WSJ (Gift Article): America’s Big Cities Are Rapidly Losing Kids. “Families with children cite concerns about costs, safety and quality of life in their move away from cities. Also contributing to the drop is a growing number of childless residents opting to stay that way, worried about the financial implications and lifestyle trade-offs of having a family. The drop is happening in cities across the economic spectrum.” In this era where we flock together with like-minded thinkers on the internet, dense, urban areas represent a possibility of still interacting in real life, and countering the caricatured versions of ourselves and the “others” created by those who benefit from keeping us divided. Will an increase in our geographic divide also increase our political, economic, and cultural ones? What gets to kicked the curb when we all move to the burbs?